Durgamasura and the Avatars

VI- Nilan- This guy is a villain cliche. I don't like him.

I was unceremoniously awakened by a bottle of water splashed on my face. "The owner of the restaurant is coming!" Aranya hissed. I sat up and saw that a man was trying to enter the restaurant. The lock wasn't opening and the guy was muttering about something. I grabbed one of the bags and ran to hide behind the counter. "How is there an owner?" I whimpered. 

Aranya looked furious, as if the man could dare to enter the restaurant (even though it was his). "I don't know. Maybe there was a spell around the restaurant, making sure that mortals wouldn't come in. Now that those demon idiots are dead, maybe the spell is broken. I doubt even Durgamasura cares about his soldiers. " "We need to go." Karnya said. Oh joy. I hadn't thought of that. 

"Do you have the pearl?" I asked. She nodded. I held onto Aranya's shoulder and the three of them pressed their skin and we dissolved into the parking lot of an abandoned mall. There were many wooden boards, paint cans, etcetera. "Well. Looks like this place hasn't been used in some time." Karnya commented. I kicked a wooden board, thinking a monster was hiding underneath. Surprisingly, there wasn't one. "Looks like there aren't any monsters." Aranya said. 

She peeked out of one of the windows and her eyes widened. She looked scared. "It's nighttime" she stuttered. True enough, on the girls' hands, the number 8, was slowly fading to 7. "Oh gods. We have only 7 days left. How is that possible?" I asked. Aranya was calculating how we lost so many days. "Okay, so we had 10 days at the start. We lost 1 day when we went to the idiot demon restaurant." "Can you please not call it that?" Isha pleaded. "Maybe they can hear us." 

"Okay fine," Aranya continued, "Then we stayed a night at the restaurant. So 8 days. We took a whole day to transport to this abandoned parking lot?"she demanded. "Oh but it isn't abandoned, my dear." Aranya looked confused as there was no one except us. The wind stirred and all the dust particles joined to form a man. The dust man said, "And you children made the unwise choice of coming here." 

Unwise? Two things came to me. One, why is that there in every movie or book. 'You made the unwise choice of coming here.' Ugh. So cliched, I thought. Two, we had the goddess of wisdom right here. How did we make the unwise choice of coming here when we had wisdom with us? Oh wait. We were on a quest. We had to be there. 

It was something about this guy's aura, like a sleepy kind, making you forget things. I figured he must be a sorcerer. Only a man like that could do something like this. He was like a reptile, hypnotizing its/his prey. It was like a trance. I saw that there was something clenched in his fist. I could barely see through it and I saw dice.

I remembered a story Aranya told us a few days ago. A story about dice. A sorcerer. Shakuni. The maternal uncle of the Kauravas. "My nephews shall have a wonderful time, destroying the world, thus breaking your poor Pandavas' morale. Hopefully, there will be a war, even bloodier than the last, and my nephews shall rule the world!" "Rule the world? There're the gods!" Aranya said, though even she didn't sound sure. "The gods are nothing against the allies we've gathered over the millenia. And the Pandavas wouldn't have won the last war if they had followed the rules. Now that they are part of the celestial realm they're bound to the rules." 

"But the gods don't follow the rules!" As soon as I said it, I regretted it. That wasn't exactly helping my case. "Ah, but boy, they're gods. As sad as it is, they can do anything that they want. The Pandavas are not gods. They may be immortal, but they are not gods." Shakuni said. "Wait. Didn't your nephews go to heaven too?" Aranya asked, looking confused. "They were reborn. They started to yearn for the pastime of torturing mortals. 

So, they chose to be reborn. When they were reborn and became adults and found out that a few gods had decided to walk the earth, they thought that it was an excellent idea to trouble them and break the Pandavas morale. There's also the upside conquering the world and all that. But their main plans are to make sure the heavens don't rise again." Heavens don't rise again? Destroy the world? Sure. A normal weekend. Maybe we could pick up fro-yo on the way back. Aranya took a deep breath and said, "Okay, Mr. Magician. 

We know that you have the second pearl." "I have a thing or two to say to you on that statement." Shakuni said, " I am not a magician. I am a sorcerer. Magicians basically act as if they have magic using illusions. Sorcerers have real magic." As if to prove his point, he brought up the hand which didn't have dice in it, and flames danced on his fingers. Aranya rolled her eyes as if it wasn't impressive. Then she looked like she got an idea. 

"I'VE GOT AN IDEA." She said through the mind link, "WE WAGER A BET." "BUT ISN'T HIS DICE MAGICAL?" I asked. "I KNOW. CAN YOU MAKE A MOVING ILLUSION OF HIM?" Suddenly I realised what she was saying. "WE'LL COVER YOU DON'T WORRY." She continued. "OKAY." I said. "We'll wager a bet!" Aranya announced, "The stakes are simple. If it's a draw, we battle. If we win, we get the pearl and you go away. If you win, you... you can kill us."